Brussels – We’re pleased to announce that Lithuania’s leading Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) has joined MVNO Europe. Teledema was founded in 2003 and unites people across Lithuania, who can enjoy exceptional attention and great network quality.

Lithuania’s small telecom market is among one of the most developed in Europe. Teledema’s success shows that guaranteeing MVNO access to the market is an appropriate way to maintain a strong level of competition while bringing more innovation on the market.

Driven by a sustainable business growth, Teledema has successfully established itself as the reference MVNO on the Lithuanian market by creating accessible and superior quality offers for users. Along with mobile network, they create SIP telephony solutions designed for business.

Jacques Bonifay, chairman of MVNO Europe, said: “I am delighted to welcome Teledema as new member. Having now a Baltic State on board reassert the willingness of MVNO Europe to be a strong voice for MVNOs and be fully representative of the European landscape”.

Innocenzo Genna, Vice-President, said: “Welcome to Teledema! We are looking forward to working together and pursue our common objective to create a more openly accessible market for all MVNOs.”

Brussels, 1 February 2017 – Yesterday evening, an agreement was reached between EU lawmakers and Member States on the level of caps for the wholesale roaming charges mobile network operators pay each other when their customers call, send texts or use their data in another EU member State. For wholesale roaming caps, a glide path has been set starting at 7,7€/GB in 2017 going down to 6€/GB in 2018 and 2,5€/GB in 2022. We would like to highlight to great work achieved by the European Parliament Rapporteur Miapetra Kumpula-Natri and Shadow Rapporteurs on the file who have been fighting for low caps in order to preserve competition.

However, despite repeated calls to go lower from the European Parliament, data caps are set at a level which is still too high. This will not only strongly affect competition but lead to higher overall prices for Europeans.

Today in European countries, retail data offers already are at 1 or 2 €/GB. As smaller operators and MVNOs pay wholesale access at the level of EU regulated caps, there is a high risk for these operators not being able to recover their costs. This will have a direct effect on customers: the higher the wholesale caps are, the fewer there will be “Roam-like-at-home” offers for consumers on the market using prepaid offers or unlimited bundles by virtue of art. 4.2. and 4.3. of the Fair Usage Regulation adopted last year in December.

MVNO Europe Vice-President,Innocenzo Genna stated that “European citizens expect the end of the roaming surcharges to happen without losing competitive tariffs and innovative offers: by contrast, with the present deal on wholesale caps, they will be heavily disappointed”.

With excessive wholesale roaming charges, dominant mobile operators will be the only ones to drive the market, adding barriers for smaller players. MVNOs, being the first-movers in offering innovative services, are therefore crucial for competition adding real value on the telecoms market and to end-users.

This week has been critical for the future of the telecommunications market in Europe. While the European Parliament’s Industry Committee adopted a pro-competitive and forward-looking position on wholesale international mobile roaming on 29 Nov 2016, ministers from the EU Member States adopted a text on 2 Dec 2016 which would allow mobile network operators to apply extremely high wholesale international roaming charges. Parliament focused on the interests of end-users, innovation and competition. Ministers chose to protect large mobile operators. The European Parliament and Council (representing Member States) will now enter, with the support of the European Commission, into protracted so-called trilogue negotiations from very different starting positions.

2 December 2016 – On 29 November, the European Parliament’s Industry Committee adopted its position on the European Commission’s legislative proposal amending Regulation 531/2012. Members of the Industry Committee voted the report of Finnish MEP Miapetra Kumpula-Natri by a very large majority. By putting forward wholesale mobile roaming caps for data at 4€/GB in 2017 and by adopting a “glide path” approach with reductions to 1€/GB, they acknowledged current market reality and foreseeable cost reductions in providing mobile data services in Europe.

In the context enabling the abolition of retail roaming surcharges on 15 June 2017, as per Regulation 2015/2120 it is important that retail and wholesale measures are connected. This is necessary to enable all operators to compete on the market by lowering the currently regulated wholesale caps. Today’s Council text foresees that these caps for voice, SMS and data, are kept at a higher level than the ones originally proposed by the European Commission and thus much higher than already existing retail offers on the market. This would force smaller operators and MVNOs that are not able to negotiate wholesale roaming access at lower prices to offer roaming services to their consumers with negative margins. Such a situation will lead to their potential eviction from the market and favour large operators that can trade within their own groups for better wholesale deals, reducing competition from challengers, and foreclosing the market for new entrants to the market.

MVNO Europe welcomes, however, the joint declaration made by the “digital like-minded” group of Member States calling for lower wholesale roaming caps. We urge the Council to adopt a flexible approach when negotiating with the European Parliament, to ensure that the EU regulated caps are lowered, reflecting the actual cost of providing wholesale mobile roaming access.

On 1st and 2nd November 2016, MVNO Europe secretariat and members participated to the MVNO Networking Congress in London. MVNO Europe debated with industry stakeholders key points concerning the MVNO sector: the end of retail roaming surcharges, the transition to 4G and 5G, and the business perspectives in IoT services brought by the new eSIM standard.

In a panel on roaming, Morgane Taylor, Policy Officer at MVNO Europe indicated that if the end of retail roaming fees could open opportunities for MVNOs with expected surges in traffic volumes, a lot of uncertainty remained on the wholesale roaming markets. The impact of ‘roam-like-a-home’ on MVNOs is unclear and will depend on the on-going negotiations at European level. The European Commission proposal on the table to review the EU regulated wholesale roaming caps will lead to serious disruption of competition and force MVNOs to withdraw their most generous data-led offers. Much work still needs to be done in the months to come to ensure that all operators, including innovative players such as MVNOs, can continue to compete on the markets.

Our member Franz Delpont from Euro Information Telecom debated, in a panel with MVNOs Talk Talk and Virgin Mobile Polska, on the future of communications services in light of the 4G transition as well as future developments on 5G. It is crucial for MVNOs to participate in the take-up of the latest standard and be able to provide cutting-edge technology to their customers. MVNOs are too often barred from offering higher value-added services and standards.

MVNO Europe Chair Jacques Bonifay (Transatel) gave exciting perspectives for MVNOs on the IoT segment, as the eSIM standard is being integrated. Nevertheless, MVNOs need to remain vigilant at business and policy levels as to make sure the value proposition will not shift to device manufacturers in the future.

The “Roaming Coalition”, bringing together European competitive operators representing more than 70 million SIM cards, calls for sustainable conditions on the wholesale roaming market to enable fair competition as retail mobile roaming surcharges are scrapped.

The caps agreed today amongst Member States go against the underlying economics of operators at wholesale level, with a cap for data at 10€/GB on the wholesale market, while common existing retail offers have prices as low as 1€/GB.

A need for coherence between retail prices, wholesale caps and wholesale costs is supported by the Body of European Regulators in Electronic Communications (BEREC), in its recent opinion on the draft FUP act and sustainability of the abolition of retail roaming surcharges: “Retail price ≥ wholesale charge ≥ wholesale cost […] since Roam-like-at-Home (RLAH) necessitates that international roaming retail prices are set equal to domestic prices, entails that domestic retail prices in all EEA Member States should exceed wholesale roaming charges and at the same time the wholesale roaming caps should exceed the wholesale roaming costs”.

It can be seen from current retail offers on EU markets that the actual cost of supplying data at wholesale level is in fact much lower than claimed by the European Commission’s Impact Assessment, in particular for data. An International Telecommunications Union (ITU) report from 2015 shows that there are little justifiable additional costs, in practice, for the provision of international roaming compared to domestic roaming.

It is also essential to note that the shift to 4G-LTE means that the average price per GB will continue to decline sharply in the next years.

In this context, the Coalition welcomes and supports the draft report on the revision of the rules for wholesale roaming markets presented by the European Parliament Rapporteur MEP Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, as well as today’s agreement in Parliament on a glide path for data caps. The report proposes strong reductions of wholesale roaming caps, as well as a periodic review thereof, and contains an explanatory statement which correctly recognises the intrinsic connection between an extended retail Fair Use Policy and the level of wholesale roaming caps. In light of the Fair Use Policy proposals published on 26 September 2016, we consider that to ensure competition and end-user benefits, the wholesale roaming caps should be reduced to an even lower level.

Strongly reduced wholesale caps are essential to make it possible for European end-users to continue to use large data bundles, fully benefit from innovative services going forward, and take advantage of a European digital single market.

MVNO Europe has sent a letter to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, copied to Vice President Andrus Ansip and Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, following the announcement of a “New approach” on roaming.

Adopting a forward-looking vision, MVNO Europe has continuously stated its support for roam-like-at-home since the discussions to abolish EU retail roaming fees started in 2013, provided the conditions are met for all players to be able to compete on the market.

Following the Commission’s recent proposals which includes the implementation of a year-round “fair use policy”, we are compelled to express our serious concerns relating to the potential consequences of the measures announced.

We are pointing out, in particular, that a corresponding ambitious revision of the wholesale roaming market needs to be carried out, including sufficient review clauses, as to avoid “margin squeeze” situations now and in the future for those alternative operators offering the most generous bundles and advanced service innovations to consumers and businesses. We welcome the acknowledgement of this intrinsic connection by Parliament’s rapporteur Miapetra Kumpula-Natri and call for sustainable roaming rules at EU level.

Our core message is supported by the “Roaming Coalition”, bringing together competitive operators around Europe accounting for more than 80 million SIM cards.